While I'm not a big advocate of restricting knowledge, I think there's something to be said for parental supervision to make sure a mind has reached sufficient maturity before dealing with certain facts of life. China may be going way overboard here, but maybe the rest of us aren't doing enough. Seriously, when I was 8 years old I remember the female body parts and "nudie" pictures being a thing of myth and legend. Getting your first peak at "adult" material was almost a coming of age event.

Now? Type "vagina" into your google search bar. Click on the first link. BAM! Know any 8 year olds that can't do that these days? I sure don't.

And please don't try the "it's the parent's job to monitor their kids" argument; when the kids are surrounded by restricted materials 24/7 parents would have to hold their kids eyes shut 24/7 to stand a chance. With Internet access being as ubiquitous as it is, there's no way to guarantee young Johnny or little Billy won't get some quality alone-time with Google before they're ready for it.

I fear for the future generations. I really do.

I've been working on this protocol for a long time and, just to update you, we have it working via UDP but discovered it to be essentialy useless since, as we all know, UDP is connectionless and a punch to the face is a complete waste when no connection is made.

The difficulties in implementing the protocol over TCP seem to be in the fact that the receiver of the "Punch-To-The-Face" packets (PTTFs) must first ACKnowledge the connection attempt before it will be received and, in most cases, they simply refuse the connection.

We're currently researching spoofing methods that may disguise the PTTFs until after the connection is made. However, current attempts to make a Punch To The Face look like a Hug From A Friend or Sex With A Girl have been unsuccessful.

I keep thinking how these approaches would work when applied to books.
Imagine buying a great book, a classic even, that you'd like to have a copy of to reread over the years and maybe introduce your kids to later on.

Now imagine the ink disappearing or turning to gibberish after an allowable reading period (5 years? 1 year? 1 month?). I wonder what your average reader's reaction would be if they pulled their copy of their favourite novel off their bookshelf, opened it, and found it to be completely empty (actually, it would be amusing if the pages could just disintegrate in a puff of smoke!)

And now imagine that you don't even know what this allowable reading period could be. Every time you open that novel, it could be for the last time.

Honestly, I'm amazed we still have public libraries. I mean, they let people read FOR FREE for crying out loud. People are gaining knowledge, cultures are being distributed, ideas are being thought... and it's not being monetized?! This madness has to stop!

But, never fear, this can be easily solved by applying lessons we've learned from the music and movie industries. We can have reader licensing fees, or perhaps usage-based models where we can charge by the book or by the page. We can offer incentives to keep people reading too, pay for 10 pages, read the 11th free! (This offer not applicable where the current literary work ends in 10 or less pages. Page credits not applicable to other works.)

...I'm going to have to kick my own ass if the RIAA-equivalent in the book world sees this and takes these suggestions seriously.

Actually, we're almost there. If you'll watch Back to the Future 2, the future they jump to is 2015. Yup, that's right... 6 more years baby!

I can't decide what I'll buy first though... a flying car conversion kit, or those neat garbage-processing Mr. Fusions.

Who knows, developers could learn from this and say "hmm, maybe the average gamer can't afford $60 for our generic crap-of-the-month we're churning out, maybe if it was $30 in the first place, there wouldn't be a need for a Used market"
Capitalism at work... though... I know... unbelievably wishful thinking.

... MAN does this guy need to get laid.

Yup, the Iranian government would have the RIAA butchered and slaughtered in no time. The problem would most definitely be solved.

Not so much for the Iranians though.

See what I did there? :)

I wish I could find an electronic copy of an editorial I found not too long ago in a local paper. It made an excellent and succinct point about how teachers unions are bringing about mass idiocy in our educational systems and, as a result, our populations.

I'm sure there's many factors contributing to our declining educational systems, but I don't think anyone can deny that attempting to standardize teaching and "level the playing field" as it were may not be as great of an idea as it sounds in theory. For many, math can be a hard subject. All arguments about relative difficulties and complexities aside, maths and sciences are at least not as accessible as, say, literature, history, or art. So it would stand to reason, that with less people gaining a firm and passionate grasp on a subject, there would be less available who are qualified to not only teach it, but teach it well.

Now, with teacher's unions gaining the same benefits for all teachers, where a history teacher and a calculus teacher of the same level of skill and experience receive the same compensation for their troubles, how much motivation does the truly talented mathmetician have to teach in highschool when various industries will pay him ridiculously more to work for them instead? How many history teachers would get offered $100K plus by the private sector?

So with supply and demand being what they are and all teachers NOT being created equal, why are they being paid the same? This only results in lesser qualified and lesser motivated math and science teachers in highschool resulting in less motivated and less educated students who have less chance of going into post-secondary math and science. Less post-secondary math and science students means a smaller number of talented mathmeticians and scientists graduating. This means a smaller number of potential future highschool teachers who are talented and educated enough to guide and motivate students in those fields. The cycle repeats.

I can't see the current educational crisis improving at all if these unions continue to insist that a history major has the same value as a good mathematician. I'm pretty sure we would have never made it to the moon if all we did was research the details of the war of 1812.

It makes me wonder every time I hear people are protesting by putting together a petition.
"I'm so furious... I'm going to sign my name!".
Do these things really have any effect? I picture myself being in power and being handed a stack of papers with names on them, I'd think I'd see it as trivializing the matter more than anything.
Especially considering how a lot of petitions are put together by running around in public places and grabbing random people with
"hey, you! sign your name!" "... ok, why not."

Was there a time when petitions truly were effective? Is it just the world we live in now, or have they always been this silly?

Just my two cents I guess.

You know, I don't think that makes you weird, I'm in the same boat.

When I was younger I spent more than my fair share of time with "the hotties" (yes yes, i know, slashdotters don't get hot girls, he's lying, etc etc) and I really started to detest them. From their lack of original or relevant thought to their pointless conversation-killing automated responses to their reflex-like "look-cute" maneuver any time they wanted to escape accountability (which, incidentally, was ALWAYS), I just couldn't stand it anymore.

I think it has something to do with the adolescent development process where those of us who are average or less are forced to develop social skills and be interesting or otherwise risk alienating everyone. On the other hand, no matter how vacant an attractive girl is, she's always being sniffed by throngs of horny males and thus, being never left alone, is never forced to develop the social skills the rest of us develop until much later in life.

To this day, "average" is all I find attractive. Sure, the pretty ones are nice to look at on tv but just the thought of the headache I'll get being with them again in real life honestly makes my head throb... errr... the one i think with... ... that has hair... on top!